(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a discarding apparatus, a discarding system and a discarding method which are suitably applied in a management of a recording medium such as a document.
(ii) Related Art
In a public institution such as a company office or a municipal office, generally, a secret document such as a confidential or restricted document is often dealt with. An original of the secret document is stored under strict control in order to prevent a leakage to a third party. The unnecessary secret document is discarded by using a shredder. Moreover, the document is not always discarded but a recording medium such as a CD-R, a DVD-R or an IC card can recently be discarded by using the shredder.
For many secret documents related to accounting (bills, receipts and the settlements of accounts), a period for which the secret documents are to be stored is specified. For this reason, in the case in which the secret document is to be discarded through shredding, a person in charge is to previously ascertain whether a secret document to be a discarding object can be really discarded or not through an original ledger.
In the case in which a large number of secret documents are to be discarded, however, archive periods of the secret documents are to be confirmed one by one and a discarding work is to be thus advanced, which is very complicated and takes a long time. Moreover, there is a possibility that a secret document having a residual archive period might be discarded by mistake due to an artificial confirmation error.